The introduction of employment tribunal fees could make employers less inclined to take early action in resolving disputes with staff as they will just bank on them not being able to afford legal action, ACAS has warned.
Andrew Wareing, the mediation service’s chief operating officer, told the Daily Telegraph that such a scenario risked sending UK industrial relations into a tailspin, while creating the perfect storm for grievances to escalate in future.
“One of the great uncertainties about how parties will react will come when fees are levied. Our prime focus is on what will it mean for our ability to solve cases? If, in future, a person has to make a payment to make a claim, employers won’t be that interested in early mediation,” he said.
Only if they knew that employees were “prepared to pay” would organisations try to manage disputes effectively, a situation that “could result in it being more difficult to push a settlement [early on]. It will be harder to help”, Wareing added.
The Ministry of Justice has issued a consultation on how much workers should be charged to sue their employer from 2013 in a bid to reduce the current number of claims. There were about 218,000 in 2010/11, costing businesses an average of £4,000 each to defend.
ACAS is preparing a formal submission to the consultation, which end on 6 March. The organisation’s latest statistics show that only one in 20 companies have used mediation to resolve a workplace dispute.
Approach with caution
If its fears are founded, then the results of a survey among more than 600 UK employers on the proposed changes to the tribunal system, undertaken by law firm Eversheds, will come as no surprise.
The study found that 79% of respondents believed the introduction of fees would help reduce litigation, while just under two thirds thought that imposing significantly higher fees for claims valued at more than £30,000 would likely act as a deterrent in some instances.
Some three out of five were in favour of the proposed fee structure for making appeals, while 77% did not believe it would stop them from doing so. Three quarters also supported shortening the current 90-day redundancy consultation period, with 30 days being the most popular suggested replacement.
But Geoffrey Mead, a partner at the law firm, warned that any change in this latter instance must be approached “with caution” as it derived from European Union law.
This meant that, while the consultation period could be cut officially, employers would still remain under a legal obligation to begin such activity ‘in good time’ in order to allow meaningful discussions to take place, regardless of any set timescale, he added.
In other words, the time set was only a minimum and in “some situations, would require more time for consultation to take place”, Mead said.
